China connected to the wider world long before the Qing dynasty. Ancient trade routes, later known as the Silk Roads, linked China to the Mediterranean. Merchants, monks, soldiers, and diplomats traversed these routes throughout the centuries, together with their goods, ideas, and languages.

For Qing people, the Silk Roads were a distant memory. Most trade, often conducted by European empires, bypassed the old overland routes, instead using the sea. Ideas that once entered China via the Silk Roads, like Buddhism and Islam, remained and flourished under the Qing.